Almost 400 asylum seekers have died attempting to get to Australia in boats since an inconclusive 2010 election delivered a shaky Labor government dependent on a handful of Independents and one Green. A quarter of those deaths have been in the past week. Not enough for adversarial parliamentarians to ditch their differences and find a bipartisan solution.
Australians are a deeply racist and xenophopic nation and by and large want their politicians to be harsh to refugees to discourage them trying to get into the country.
For analysis on why this is so, see Australian IndyMedia.